A MAC protocol with mobility support in cognitive radio ad hoc networks: Protocol design and analysis
Introduction
As a result of the development of cognitive radio technology, the concept of cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs) has recently been proposed in the literature [1], which involve more challenges than those in classical cognitive radio networks (CRNs). These challenges are due to variable radio environments caused by spectrum-dependent communication links, hop-by-hop transmission, changing topology, and node mobility.
Different from traditional medium access control (MAC) protocol used in ad hoc networks, the MAC protocol for CRAHNs has to address the spectrum sharing function [2], as well as to improve the throughput and spectral efficiency. Furthermore, because the primary exclusive region (PER) [3] of primary users (PUs) is an important factor that can make a significant impact on CR and PU communications, a scheme addressing the PER should be considered in MAC protocols.
Furthermore, the classical carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) based MAC protocols have the advantage of solving hidden terminal problems and having distributed operations (e.g., distributed coordination function in IEEE 802.11 MAC); thus, state-of-the-art MAC protocols [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] for CRNs have been proposed. However, PER, PU/CR activity and PER have not been comprehensively addressed in the literature.
In this paper, we propose a CSMA/CA-based MAC protocol called CM-MAC for CRAHNs to improve the performance of the network. Although the throughput performance can be related to the poor network organization and routing as the cross-layer nature of CRAHNs, the proposed mobility support algorithm (MSA) solution to PER issues working mostly at the MAC layer is mainly twofold. One is the MAC layer is a right place to address the PER issues. If an upper-layer scheme like a routing scheme is employed, a MAC layer mechanism is still needed to address the issues caused by PER like spectrum sharing, mobility, and detection. The other is solving the PER issues in MAC layer is lightweight as either the path formation or scheduling in routing is costly. For the topology, it might be an issue but we assume the nodes have sufficient communication with each other in the network. In summary, the main contributions of the paper are as follows:
- 1.
We focus on a CM-MAC protocol that addresses CR mobility and PER issues.
- 2.
We analyze the throughput of CM-MAC protocol assuming that the PU traffic follows a Poisson process.
- 3.
We show that the throughput and spectrum utilization are improved by CM-MAC compared to classical MAC protocols.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the related work regarding MAC protocols for CRAHNs; Section 3 presents the system model and motivation; Section 4 describes the CM-MAC protocol; In Section 5, the throughput analysis of the CM-MAC protocol is given; Section 6 presents numerical results; and Section 7 concludes the paper and presents some future work.
Section snippets
Related work
The objectives of the CRAHN MAC protocol not only include the improvement of channel utilization and throughput without degrading PU communications, but also include the control of spectrum management modules such as spectrum access and spectrum sharing functions to determine the timing for data transmissions [1].
The use of multiple channels for throughput improvement has been addressed in several MAC protocols. A feasible solution for throughput improvement is to find a set of good quality
System model
Before further discussion, we describe the system model used in this paper. A CRAHN is deployed in a plane containing Np PUs and NCR CR nodes. In a certain time period, a set of channels, denoted by Ki(t), is available to a CR node i and thus the total number of channels available to CR node i is |Ki(t)|. The set of channels on a transmission link between ith CR and (i + 1)th CR is Ki,i+1. There are K spectrum bands in total available to CRs and PUs, while the typically used (K + 1)th out-of-band
Overview of the proposed CM-MAC protocol
As discussed in Section 3, in order to meet the requirements of a CRAHN MAC protocol, we have to improve the traditional CSMA/CA based MAC protocol with the frame structure shown in Fig. 4(a). In Fig. 4(b), we use a CCC in order to exchange the control frames such as RTS frames, CTS frames, and acknowledgement (ACK) frames. Following the MAC protocol data unit (MPDU) transmission, a node will wait for a short inter-frame space (SIFS) period and then transmit the ACK frame. Before sending a RTS
Throughput analysis
This section provides the throughput analysis of the proposed CM-MAC protocol.
In our analysis, as the PU topology can affect the performance in terms of throughput, we assume that the center of each PU network will be at a distance of at least 2R. An example of this CRAHN is shown in Fig. 7.
Numerical results
This section shows some numerical results based on the aforementioned analysis. The parameters are listed in Table 1. Besides, all the switching intervals from transmitting to receiving are set to zero. We assume that the number of CRs, N, is identical to n in (14), and these CRs are transmitters in a CRAHN and can interfere with each other. Moreover, the channel aggregation is not considered in SCA-MAC and CM-MAC in order to let the three protocols be compared in the same condition. The
Conclusions
In this paper, we introduced the CM-MAC protocol, a MAC protocol for CRAHNs, by mainly considering CR mobility of CRs and PUs’ PER regions. We included the spectrum sensing in the handshaking procedure, and thus the spectrum information updates on CRs are highly dependent on the PU traffic and the CR data traffic. Moreover, we demonstrated the effectiveness of CM-MAC by showing the analytical link throughput, which is mainly related to the following parameters: number of CRs, stationary
Peng Hu received his M.S. degree in communication and information systems from Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China and his Ph.D. degree from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He has served as a reviewer for several international journals and conferences including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, and Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. His current research interest is in the field of cognitive radio ad hoc
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Peng Hu received his M.S. degree in communication and information systems from Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China and his Ph.D. degree from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He has served as a reviewer for several international journals and conferences including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, and Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. His current research interest is in the field of cognitive radio ad hoc networks, sensor networks, and Internet of Things.
Mohamad Ibnkahla received the Ph.D. degree and the Habilitation a Diriger des Recherches degree (HDR) from the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse (INPT), Toulouse, France, in 1996 and 1998, respectively. He joined Queen’s University, Canada, in 2000, where he is now a full professor. He led several projects applying wireless sensor networks in various areas such as environment monitoring, wildlife tracking, pollution detection and control, food traceability and safety risk monitoring, highway safety, intelligent transportation, and water management. He has published Signal Processing for Mobile Communications Handbook, CRC Press, 2004; Adaptive Signal Processing in Wireless Communications, CRC Press, 2008; Adaptation and Cross-layer Design in Wireless Networks, CRC Press, 2008, Wireless Sensor Networks: A Cognitive Perspective, CRC Press, 2012, and Cooperative Cognitive Radio: The Complete Spectrum Cycle, CRC Press, 2014.